This blog records the learning journeys of students at Muritai School learning through Mantle of the Expert.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Day One of Our New Mantle

Today this group of year 3 and 4 students at Muritai School came together to start work in an enrichment programme that will be taught using Mantle of the Expert.

For this Mantle of the Expert work we will be in role as an enterprise that organises school camps. Through this fictional context we will consider whether belonging to groups is important for people, look at the different ways people establish and manage relationships, consider the different impacts of co-operative versus competitive activities, and consider what skills and attitudes are important for establishing group belonging and what kind of activities would best support groups of children to acquire these skills.

These ideas will be explored as we, as part of our work in this fictional role, plan school camp style programmes for a range of different groups. In order to put together these plans we will research real existing outdoor education centres and school camp businesses, trial different activities, and create and design our own activities and tasks.

Today we began our work by looking at some 'You Tube' videos where adults and teenagers reflected on their ‘Outward Bound’ experiences (see link on right hand side tool bar if you would like to view these, we watched the first two videos on this page). We listened carefully to what people said about the programme and had a great discussion around the 2 questions:

‘what do you think the point of a camp/enterprise like this is?’‘what did people seem to get out of going to a camp like this?’

Here are some of our ideas:

“to meet new people”“to make friends”“to be part of a group”“to be more confident”“encourages you to try new things”“to have fun”“pushing limits which means pushing themselves to do bigger things, things they haven’t done before”“to go from saying ‘I can’t do this’ to saying ‘I can’”“to challenge themselves”

We talked about some of the slogans for Outward Bound and what they meant: 'find your true potential - achieve things you never thought possible', 'challenge yourself and push you limits', 'develop your team skills in real situations', and 'step outside your comfort zone'. We learnt what it meant to ‘step out of your comfort zone’ and did some writing about a time when we had stepped out of our comfort zone. Here are some examples of our writing:

‘when I first went kayaking I went out of my comfort zone. But now it is really easy because I have done it before’ Evie

‘when I was lost in the playground I was scared and I was out of my comfort zone’ Daniel

‘when I first went to gym I was so scared. I had completely no idea how to do anything. The hardest thing was doing the splits. And I did not know anyone. But now it is easy. I know lots of people. I like going to gym’ Zoe

‘I went out of my comfort zone when I went to Movie World. Going on the ride called The Wild West really got me out of my comfort zone. I felt good after I did it’. Hugo

‘When I started swimming it was hard to keep afloat. It was hard to kick and stroke. Now I feel comfortable swimming’. Pablo

‘When I first went to gym I was really scared and now I do things really easy. I thought that my coach was going to push me down really far in splits but now I can get down so it isn’t scary and I know I can trust my coach’. Lucy

‘When I started school I was scared because I didn’t know anybody in my class and now I know everybody and the teacher, and it isn’t scary any more’. Luca

‘When I first went wharf jumping I was scared because it was so far […]then I jumped and I felt great and then I kept doing it, it was really fun! It doesn’t seem so far now’ Helena.

Next we looked at a range of images of children involved in outdoor education activities. We brainstormed what we thought each of the activities were about by using post it notes to put our ideas around the outside of the images. Some of the words that were brainstormed were: ‘challenging’, ‘having fun’, ‘trust’, ‘teamwork’, ‘problem solving’, ‘helping others’, and ‘trying hard’.

Brainstorming ideas.

Next we chose some of our favourite images and recreated them as 'freeze frames'. Below are the images followed by the 'freeze frame' that was created. Once we had made a 'freeze frame' the rest of the group acted as the 'voices in the head' of the people in the scene, as they tried to imagine themselves in the scene and what they might be feeling.

Freeze Frames

To finish up we tried out some team building activities. Here are some photos of us playing some different games. After each game we reflected whether the game was co-operative or competitive and discussed the differences between these different types of games.

Team Building Activities

Paper, Scissors, Rock in Teams

Passing the Hula Hoop: around the circle without letting go of anyone's hands.